Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (7 page)

Jack had met Jerri while he was at
the FBI Academy, which was in the same compound as the lab. They’d
developed a friendship while he’d been in training that had become
more serious after he graduated and received his badge. They’d had
a brief love affair, but Jack had found that he simply wasn’t ready
for another relationship yet. Jerri had been very understanding,
and they had remained friends after breaking off the romantic part
of their relationship. She had never been as close to him as
Sheldon, but she and Jack had stayed in touch and made sure to
visit one another when she happened to be at headquarters, or when
he went down to Quantico. It was one small bit of good fortune in a
terrible situation, because Jerri would almost certainly be one of
the first to have her latex-gloved hands on whatever the plane was
bringing back from Lincoln.

“That’s another one I owe you,
Richards,” Jack told him. “Just think of the damage this must be
doing to your reputation.”

“Yeah, right,” Richards told him.
“Don’t worry: I’m sure my standing as the Bureau’s number one
asshole is still locked in, Dawson, although I’ll put it at risk
one more time before you can kiss my ass goodbye. One of my people
just showed me something interesting. It turns out that the old
lady who lived next to Perrault had a recent photo of her that she
was willing to fork over. One nice thing about hardcopy prints:
they can’t be deleted from a database. Too bad the old lady had no
idea where Perrault ran off to. Check your email.”

With that, he hung up.

Jack shook his head, idly wondering
at what must have happened in Richards’ life for him to turn out so
surly. Then he hit the check mail button on his laptop, and was
rewarded with a happy beep that announced incoming new mail. It was
from one of the special agents in Lincoln, and the subject line
read “Dr. Naomi Perrault.”

Opening it up, Jack felt his breath
catch in his throat. It showed what must have been Perrault’s
neighbor, a kindly-looking woman in her seventies wearing an
outrageous floral print dress, arm-in-arm with a much younger
woman, Perrault, who was holding a clearly displeased white cat.
Perrault was beautiful, with lush brunette hair tied back in a
ponytail that fell over her left shoulder like a silken waterfall.
Her flawless skin was light, but not pale, and clearly was only
exposed to the damaging rays of the sun with great care. She was
smiling shyly, her full lips parted to reveal perfect teeth. A
body-hugging sleeveless white top showed off her bust and cleavage
in a tastefully pleasant way, and revealed shoulders and arms that
were trim and toned from regular exercise.

But what captivated him were
Perrault’s eyes, which echoed the smile formed by her lips with
perhaps just a hint of innocent mischief: one was a deep, almond
brown, while the other was a bright azure blue. He had never seen
anyone with eyes like that before, and he had a hard time tearing
his gaze away from them.

“Talk about deadly beauty,” Jack
muttered, his brain conflicted between the exotic-looking woman in
the visual image before him and the near-certainty that she had
somehow been involved in Sheldon’s murder. “Shit.”

CHAPTER FOUR

With the image of Perrault’s face
still haunting his thoughts, Jack checked his weapons, strapped
them on, and donned a light rain jacket. After sliding his phone
and badge into the inside pockets, he went to the door to the
garage, not looking forward to the drive that lay ahead of
him.

He heard a sudden pattering on the
wood floor behind him, and turned to see Alexander trotting after
him, chirruping in the way that Siberian cats often did. He held
his favorite stuffed toy mouse, its tail and ears long since chewed
off, in his mouth: Jack had taught him to play fetch, and he hadn’t
gotten any play time today.

Crazy
cat
, Jack thought, kneeling down to
scratch Alexander in his favorite spot right above his tail,
eliciting a deep purr.
You should’ve been
born a dog
. “Sorry, boy,” he said, “no
fetch today, and no walks, either.” He kept Alexander as an inside
cat, but would take him out morning and evening for a walk, putting
a chest harness and leash on him. Alexander accepted the indignity
with amazingly good humor, but Jack suspected that was only because
several of the neighbors always seemed to be out and about,
conveniently laden with cat treats. “Try to stay out of trouble,
okay?”

Alexander’s green eyes promised no
such thing, and Jack just sighed in resignation as he gave him one
final pat on the head before heading into the garage, locking the
door behind him.

After sliding into the seat of his
battered but well-maintained Land Rover Defender, he pulled the
door shut as the garage door opener hummed, raising the roll-up
door to reveal the dark downpour in the rear-view
mirror.

I should call
Jerri
, he thought, sensing the phone’s
weight in his jacket,
and let her know
that I’m coming down. Hell, I should call Clement and tell him what
I’ve been up to. I hate sneaking around behind his
back
.

After a moment’s
reflection, he discarded the idea. Clement would crush Jack’s
testicles in a garlic press for sticking his nose into the case
without authorization, and Richards would take the squashed remains
and deep fry them for getting him into trouble with Clement.
Okay, just call Jerri, then
.

He was reaching into his jacket for
the phone when it chimed, alerting him to new voice mail. Pulling
it out, he saw that there was a message from Jerri. She must have
tried to call him during his last conversation with Richards. He
hit the play button.

“Jack, this is Jerri,” she said
before biting back a sob. Jack knew that she was like a precision
machine at work in the lab, flawless and unflappable. But she was
also a woman of extraordinary emotional depth, and was extremely
sensitive to the feelings of others, especially Jack. “The watch
center called me in, but wouldn’t say why. I just found out now
after getting to the lab. God, I’m so sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry.
You know we’ll do everything we can here for Sheldon.” She paused
for a moment, trying to stifle more sobs. “Call me. Let me know
that you’re okay. I...”

I love
you
, Jack knew she wanted to say, and his
gut twisted with guilt. He knew she had loved him, and still did.
Jerri was a wonderful woman, and he knew that had his own past been
different, they would probably have been very happy together. But
the past was what it was, and he couldn’t change it, any more than
he could change the emptiness he still felt in his heart that she
simply hadn’t been able to fill.

“Just call me when you can,” she
finished in a weak voice before hanging up.

He knew he should call her back, but
this was too important: he didn’t want to tip her off that he
planned to come down to the lab or she’d tell him not to. If she’d
wanted him there, she would have invited him when she called. He
knew that she would be doing the right thing, the professional
thing, by not letting him get involved. He hoped that if he just
showed up down there, she’d at least let him observe. She might be
angry with him, but Jack doubted she would turn him away. He felt
like he was using her, taking advantage of their relationship, and
it twisted the knife of guilt a bit deeper.

“Fuck it,” he cursed, starting up
the Defender and backing out into the rain, the garage door rolling
closed behind him.

Winding his way out of his
neighborhood, he got onto the Capital Beltway, heading west toward
I-95. He had to keep his speed down because of the rain, and was
thankful that there wasn’t too much traffic at this wretched time
of night. He’d had enough tragedy for one day, and didn’t need any
idiots on the beltway to make it worse. His Defender, which he’d
bought after Emily’s death, had already weathered two accidents on
the beltway. The tough SUV had come through with little more than a
few dings and scratches, while the other cars had ended up as lumps
of misshapen metal. Fortunately, no one had been seriously injured,
but the accidents had put to rest any guilt Jack had felt at
spending so much on a vehicle.

He was halfway to the ramp for I-95
South when he saw the exit for Van Dorn Street, and it suddenly
struck him that Sheldon’s condo was only a mile and a half away. He
and Sheldon had long ago exchanged keys (and, in Sheldon’s case,
the code for his condo’s security system) so they could check on
each other’s places when business trips took them off somewhere.
Sheldon usually told Jack not to bother checking his place, since
if anything went seriously wrong the condo management would take
care of it. Jack hadn’t been there since before Sheldon had left on
his most recent assignment.

Jack vacillated over whether he
should go there. The Bureau had probably already sent a team to
look for leads in Sheldon’s murder, or would be as soon as they
could get a search warrant. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea for
Jack to drop by while his fellow agents were going through the
place.

On the other hand, he did have a
legitimate reason to be there: he was the executor of Sheldon’s
will, and was going to have to face that unpleasant duty sooner or
later. But that would be a thin excuse to Clement if other agents
found him wandering around Sheldon’s place. Jack could hardly claim
he didn’t know Sheldon’s condo would be searched, but he doubted
Clement would bust his ass over it.

His indecision almost made him miss
the exit, and he had to stomp on the brakes and swerve to make it.
Still going too fast, he had to wrestle the Defender through the
tight loop that took him back over the beltway to the intersection
with Van Dorn.

“Okay,” he breathed, his system
pumped full of adrenaline from nearly rolling over in the turn,
“I’m awake now.”

From there, he drove north the short
distance to Sheldon’s condo, and pulled into an empty parking space
near where Sheldon usually parked. Jack took a quick look around,
but couldn’t see his friend’s car. Sheldon generally left it here
when he went on trips out of town.

More importantly, there weren’t any
FBI or police vehicles here. Yet.

Darting through the rain, he entered
the lobby area that was empty except for a bored-looking young
woman behind the counter. He waved to her as he walked across the
lobby, but she didn’t bother looking up.

Jack moved on to the elevators,
punching the “up” button. One of the elevators opened immediately,
and Jack got in and pushed the button for the tenth floor. Once
there, he headed down the hallway to Sheldon’s place.

He felt a chill as he turned the key
in the lock and opened the door: the security system remained
silent. It should have been beeping urgently, warning him that he
only had thirty seconds to enter the code before the alert center
and the front desk were notified of a possible break-in. Sheldon
always set it, even if he was just running out for a few minutes.
Jack had once joked that he thought Sheldon was paranoid. However,
after his friend had finished explaining how much some of the
computer equipment he had in his back room was worth, Jack never
joked about it again.

The condo had an entryway vestibule
that blocked the view to most of the darkened living room area.
Jack felt stark naked as he stood in the doorway, silhouetted by
the light from the hallway. The hair on the back of his neck
suddenly stood on end and he felt gooseflesh break out on his
arms.

Something’s not
right
.

He quickly stepped through the door,
out of the light, and eased the door closed, careful not to let it
latch in case he needed to make a fast exit. He drew his Glock and
crouched down in one corner of the vestibule. Aiming the gun into
the living room, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness while he
listened intently for the sound of any potential
threats.

The first thing he noticed was the
smell, a strange jumble of odors in the apartment. It was coming
from the kitchen, which was immediately to his left. It was as if
someone had taken the kitchen’s contents and mixed them together on
the kitchen floor.

There was something else, too, very
faint among the other scents, but still distinguishable, that he
couldn’t quite place. It was like nothing he’d ever smelled before,
an unpleasant cross between ammonia and burning hemp that would
have been nauseating had it been any stronger.

He waited a full minute, listening
intently as he fought to keep his own breathing as quiet as
possible. All he could hear was the faint noise of cars going by on
the street beyond the parking lot, ten floors below. There was no
sound from the adjoining condos, or from the units above and below:
everyone in this part of the building seemed to be
asleep.

Staying low, he reached around the
wall to the right, feeling for the light switch in the living room
while his eyes and weapon remained fixed on the living room area.
His finger tensed on the trigger as he flipped on the lights and
saw what lay before him.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. The living
room looked like a tornado had ripped through it. Every piece of
furniture had been upended and torn apart, the stuffing from the
chairs and sofa mounded in white, fluffy piles.